- The first thing we learned was that Trumpism is an utter repudiation of modern conservatism. For the last 40 years, the Republican Party has been a coalition of three tendencies. On Tuesday, Trump rejected or ignored all of them.
To Brooks' point, there's a big difference, apparently, between conservative and Conservative, between republican and Republican. I wonder what the opposite might look like from the left. That is, could a modern Leftist demagogue arise to oppose Trump, a person who doesn't embody inclusion and government intervention so much, but perhaps weaponized identity politics and socialism? As much as I didn't agree with Sanders' economic agenda, I voted for him in MI's primary because he at least believes that justice means economic/financial justice, and that most other problems derive from that starting point. Trump is a demagogue of a sort that we haven't seen in our lifetimes, and we're finding that no amount of supposed 'ideas' from the Paul Ryan set are as important as the 'R' by his name. I really hope that the democrats have the fortitude to resist this kind of politics and not fall into the fight-fire-with-fire sort of game.
If he was governing in accordance with that speech I would be less terrified. Brooks is right that he never mentioned social policies like abortion but it doesn't mean that those sacred cows are out of the republican pasture. He will build a court towards that end. Those things are the marathon, this speech was about the sprint.